Couple Find A Source Of Strength In Virgin Mary; `For Those Who Believe In God, No Explanation Is Needed. For Those Who Do Not Believe In God, No Explanation Is Possible.'

GIG HARBOR - Jessy Ang is an anomaly - a psychiatrist who believes that Mary, the mother of Jesus, has more answers than Freud, the father of psychiatry.

When Ang and his wife, Editha, faced unfounded charges of tax evasion and professional fraud, it wasn't psychiatry that saved him, Ang says. It was God - with help from Mary.

The virgin of the Gospels, the mother at the manger, has been a source of strength for Christians, especially Roman Catholics such as the Angs, since the early days of the faith. Many honor her as a link between God and humanity, the woman they believe God chose to bear Jesus, his son.

When the Angs were acquitted of the charges against them last fall, they visited a Marian shrine in Europe to give thanks. And when they returned home to Gig Harbor last month, Ang made Mary the centerpiece of a life-size nativity scene that serves as a spiritual road map to their faith and their renewed trust in American justice.

Along with the virgin Mary, her infant Jesus and the other familiar Christmas figures on display, Ang has included undeclared saints of civil rights and human sacrifice who inspired him during his five-year legal ordeal: Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, whom Ang credits with compassion and a common touch.

"Mary is the most important," Ang says. "The rest of them, it's a contemporary message to us to be like them. But Mary teaches us to surrender to God, unconditionally."

Ang is a devoted Catholic who attends Mass daily and prays "to Jesus Christ and God the father, but also to Mary."

He discovered years ago, he says, that the teachings of Freud were not nearly as important to his mental health as the teachings of the church and the Bible.

In 1996, Ang and his wife had planned a family trip to Medjugorje, a once-obscure village in the hills of war-shattered Bosnia-Herzegovina where Mary is said to appear daily to thousands of pilgrims. The trip was abruptly called off that April when federal agents raided the couple's home in Gig Harbor and their psychiatric clinic in Tacoma.

The Angs - Editha worked as her husband's office manager - had been under investigation for two years in a government fraud investigation. The investigation involved a scheme in which psychiatrists were thought to be helping refugees from Southeast Asia collect undeserved welfare and disability payments by saying they suffered from post-traumatic-stress disorder or other mental disabilities.

Neither Ang nor any other psychiatrists were charged. But agents alleged the Angs had maintained separate books for tax purposes and to show banks considering loan applications. Ang pleaded guilty at first, then changed his mind when he saw what conviction would mean - five to seven years in prison, loss of $2 million in assets and revocation of his medical license.

The Angs were acquitted last September in federal court in Tacoma. On November 19, they and other family members headed at last to Medjugorje to thank Mary for her part in the acquittal.

Pilgrims have considered Medjugorje a holy place for the past 17 years. On a warm June day in 1981, a beautiful young woman with a child in her arms appeared to six teenagers on Crnica Hill near the town. The apparition frightened them at first, but they returned the next day, believing that she was Mary, the mother of Christ, and that she had a message for them from God.

The visions and messages of peace and faith have continued, and Medjugorje has become one of the world's leading pilgrimage sites, despite civil war and church politics. The war that splintered the Balkan states of the former Yugoslavia never really touched the village. And the Vatican has hesitated to endorse the site until the visions cease and proof can be offered that something supernatural may be happening there. Pope John Paul II has encouraged pilgrims to visit the shrine, but has avoided it himself in trips to the Balkans.

The Medjugorje apparition is one of 386 sightings of Mary in the 20th century that are listed on a Web site maintained by the Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton.

The reports are increasing in recent years, but to be counted, Mary must appear in her full figure.

The most famous Marian shrines are Lourdes in France and Fatima in Portugal, although there are shrines in Rwanda, Japan and New Zealand, as well as Ohio and Oregon.

Most, including Medjugorje, are not authorized by the Vatican.

In Medjugorje, the teenagers who saw Mary on the hillside in 1981 are now grown. And the pilgrimage site, like those elsewhere, has been surrounded by commercial hubbub. Tour buses, souvenir shops, hotels and restaurants have crowded out the normal life of the village.

During their trip, the Angs stayed in a bed-and-breakfast run by one of the "visionaries," Vicka Ivankovic.

Every afternoon at 5:40, Ivankovic gathers her boarders around to pray a rosary and entertain a vision of the virgin.

Ang saw nothing. But Ivankovic fell to her knees, Ang says, and began speaking in "a private language" he didn't understand.

Ivankovic later translated the message: God loves everyone and wants people to go back to prayerful lives that are not so consumer-driven.

Ang has no doubts about the vision. He has seen miracles before. When his own mother, a devout Catholic, died a few years ago, a clock that hadn't chimed for years suddenly did, and family members reported feeling her touch and hearing her puttering in the kitchen. Some mourners smelled roses when there were none.

"People can be skeptical, but I believe in the supernatural," Ang says. He quotes a saying attributed to John La Farge, a 19th-century artist of stained-glass windows and church murals.

La Farge's words are often recalled by Christians such as Ang who venerate Mary as the mother of God and are called on to explain her inexplicable visitations to Earth:

"For those who believe in God, no explanation is needed. For those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible."

Sally Macdonald's phone number is 206-464-2248. Her e-mail is smacdonald@seattletimes.co.